We try to remember Mary's life, not her tragic death

It can give people the creeps. After you have worked a while in The Tribune's Mishawaka office, you hear the story that a woman was murdered there. It's a shame that, for many of us, the memory of Mary Collins Kretschmar is reduced to a few scant details. She deserves better. We always want to remember Mary as a friend and fellow journalist, not as an office whisper or a heart-aching headline from the dusty files. We want to remember how she lived so joyously, not how she died so tragically. Yet here we are -- a day after the 25th anniversary of her death -- and most of us old-timers remember that evening of Dec. 15, 1980, as vividly as the day when JFK was shot. Let's first get the awful events of that night out of the way: Mary, who had just turned 26, was working in the Mishawaka office at 123 Lincoln Way West in the early evening, while eating her supper at her desk. In a few minutes, she was scheduled to leave for the P-H-M school board meeting at 7:30 p.m. But for unknown reasons, Mary was attacked by Ron K. Whitehead, a burly 16-year-old high school dropout who was working for his father's cleaning service inside The Tribune. She was beaten with a steel rod from a typewriter stand and eventually strangled with a cord. Five months pregnant and married to David Kretschmar for not quite a year, Mary apparently put up quite a struggle. Whitehead was covered with blood and looked beaten up himself when police apprehended him. He had made the 911 call just before 8:30 p.m., claiming an intruder had attacked both Mary and him. The police quickly saw through his story. We will never know the reason for this heinous attack. Serving a 54-year prison sentence, Whitehead killed himself with a razor blade in 1996 while never revealing his motive. We do know -- or at least we believe we know -- about how Mary would have continued to live. "I doubt she would have won a Pulitzer Prize -- none of us have -- but I do know she would have been a great mother, that she would have helped out her church, her school and places like Camp Millhouse," says The Tribune's Ken Bradford. She was both committed and caring and, of course, she had journalism in her blood. Her father, Walt Collins, had worked at The Tribune when Mary was a little girl before he went over to IUSB as the assistant to the chancellor and then to the University of Notre Dame as the editor of the Notre Dame Magazine. And Mary's mom, Carol, was the longtime author of the Tribune's genealogy column, "Michiana Roots." "Mary could cover the difficult stories, ask the tough questions and be a persistent nag if necessary," remembers Ed Perkins, then the paper's city editor. "But she loved people, always sought out the positive slant and she always wanted to do the right thing. "She proved to many of us that you can be a good journalist and a good person at the same time." Besides her news stories, Mary wrote articles on 70-year-old crossing guards, little children and the stories they loved to read and people who make a difference -- just like she did. Had she lived, Mary would have turned 51 on Dec. 4. Yet so many of us remember her as the sweet young woman with the shy smile and pretty eyes and, yes, a hard nose when she needed it to be. And she loved being at The Tribune -- first as a youngster following her dad into work ... then as a two-time Next Generation staffer of the year as a St. Joseph's High School student ... and later as full-time staffer after graduation from IU and a couple of short stints at smaller papers. "We were so proud when she came home and started working for The Tribune," says Walt Collins, who still teaches journalism at Notre Dame. Mary was the Collins' second of five children. They also have 10 grandchildren and still stay in contact with David Kretschmar and his family. "At this point in time, we focus on the positive and remember Mary lovingly," Walt continues. "We figure her little girl (Mary's premature baby) would be out of college by now and Mary might have five children in all and loving every minute of it." Mary's family prefers to celebrate her life rather than mourn her death. So they focus on her birthday Dec. 4 rather than on doing anything special on Dec. 15. I was working in The Tribune sports department in South Bend on that terrible night and the news caused feelings of anguish and anger and helplessness. "So many of us were thinking of all the 'what ifs,'" Bradford says. "Two or three of us in the Mishawaka office also had meetings to cover that night but we lived close enough that we went home to eat supper. Mary stayed. If somebody else could have been there to stop it ..." Some Tribune people showed a different kind of courage that night. Managing editor Jack Powers and Ed Perkins' wife, Jenny, went to the Collins' home to break the tragic news. Mishawaka bureau chief Dale Cotter waited until the police finished their investigation and then mopped up Mary's blood in the early-morning hours. And reporter Kevin Burke had to put his personal feelings on hold while reporting the horrific story for the paper. Mary could have been that kind of brave journalist, too, had she been called upon to cover a similar tragedy. But I venture to say that she would have cried for the victim when she got home -- just like so many of her Tribune friends and family did for her that night. On Dec. 15, 1980, someone was killed in The Tribune Mishawaka office. Her name was Mary Collins Kretschmar. She had a shy smile and pretty eyes and sometimes a hard nose. And she was very special. Bill Moor's column appears on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Contact him at bmoor@sbtinfo.com, or write him at the South Bend Tribune, 225 W. Colfax Ave., South Bend, IN 46626; (574) 235-6072.